Christopher Howse writes leaders and features and reviews for The Daily Telegraph, which he joined in 1996 as obituaries editor. His Saturday column, Sacred Mysteries, is on religion. He lives in Westminster.

Gordon Brown's butler to hang out at No 10

Gordon Brown has advertised for a butler. This is good news. Every rich man should have a butler.

I realise that Jeeves is not a butler, even though he could do the biz if need be. "If the call comes, he can buttle with the best of them," Bertie Wooster says in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.

It is the Wodehousian butler that springs to mind when the word is used. So it is quite funny to read in Genesis of Pharaoh's butler. If you remember, he and Pharaoh's baker had dreams that Joseph interpreted. It was fine for the butler, whom Pharaoh "restored unto his butlership", but bad news for the baker, who was hanged.

Joseph had done the butler a good turn, but was he thankful? He was not. "Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him." This seems to me a very good moral for life in politics. Once someone to whom you have given a leg-up is prospering he will soon forget you.

Even so, buttling in Downing Street looks like an attractive prospect – too attractive for anyone given to keeping a diary. Perhaps the contract includes a hanging clause for offenders.